


Luminous Beings Are We

by uro_boros



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen, M/M, Star Wars AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2015-02-22
Packaged: 2018-03-14 12:22:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3410462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uro_boros/pseuds/uro_boros
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s dressed in white and tan robes that Levi knows are blatantly illegal in the newly founded empire and there’s a sad, tired look in his eyes. He says, “I have six hundred credits,” voice low so as to not be heard by anyone else in the cantina.</p>
<p>When he slides them over, they’re stamped with the old symbols of the Republic. Levi pockets them anyway</p>
            </blockquote>





	Luminous Beings Are We

He’s dressed in white and tan robes that Levi knows are blatantly illegal in the newly founded empire and there’s a sad, tired look in his eyes. He says, “I have six hundred credits,” voice low so as to not be heard by anyone else in the cantina.

When he slides them over, they’re stamped with the old symbols of the Republic. Levi pockets them anyway. They’re not enough to get the man where he wants to go, but Levi’s done more for less. 

He maybe does it for what the man doesn’t show, rather than what he does. That he’s a Jedi is obvious; he wears it like he wants someone to ask about the saber clipped to his belt or the distant look in his eyes. His accent is clipped, clearly from the Core, and he scratches at the growing scruff on his chin and cheeks as Levi’s examines his fake security papers.

There’s a green-eyed boy, no older than seven, sitting still to his side.  

Levi doesn’t ask and he doesn’t ask for either of their names.

The man answers the unspoken question for him: “I’m Erwin,” he murmurs gratefully, and then pushes at the boy’s shoulder, “and this is Eren. Thank you, Captain Levi.”

"Thank you," choruses Eren. His brow is furrowed, like he’s in deep thought, but he’s also not focusing on anything in particular—a spot on the wall, a shadow, maybe something else.

"First sign of trouble," Levi warns, "I dump you at the nearest Imperial base. Don’t doubt it."

Erwin looks amused. “Odd,” he says fondly, “but I do.”

"Yeah, well," Levi snorts, uncomfortable. He’s never liked Jedi—used to avoid them the few chances he ever did encounter them, though smugglers and Jedis didn’t make a habit of run-ins. It was something about the way they looked at others: like they could see all of you, even the parts you didn’t want to show, and like they thought you could be so much more.

They were usually right. They were also a dying breed.

The chips are cold in his pocket. He nods at them, and they leave the bar together, Eren’s voice a small, trailing thing behind them.

"He would have done it for nothing," the boy says, softly and confused. "You didn’t have to give him our credits, Master Smith."

The Jedi doesn’t respond, which is probably the only reason Levi doesn’t turn them around.

—

Eren practices with Erwin’s lightsaber on board Levi’s ship.

He tries to stop them. There’s too many ways for it to go wrong and Levi’s seen the damage of those blades, even if he’s always thought a blaster to be more effective.

Erwin promises no damage. He’s shaved his face by now, and he looks very much the part of the man who used to be featured in the holos during the Clone Wars.

"He needs the practice," he explains gently, like he expects Levi to understand.

Levi does. Erwin knows he does. He makes a noise in the back of his throat and lets them do their thing, even if it means a seven-year old is blindly waving around a lightsaber in his kitchen.

—

Erwin is some combination of surrogate father and teacher. He puts Eren to bed and wakes him up on a strict schedule.

There’s leniency, of course—he allows the whined for five more minutes, the occasional story about what Coruscant used to look like. Levi listens to those.

He remembers. The last time he had been there, it had looked the exact same—no core to it at all, really, just buildings, tall and rising everywhere. The Empire hadn’t change anything about how Coruscant looked, just how it felt.

The memory tightens in Levi’s chest.

Erwin’s pale blue eyes, illuminated by the dimmed track-lights running over their heads, say that he knows. That he understands.

"Never did like Jedi," Levi mutters, and Erwin understands that, too. "Next planet," he tells him as a warning, but he never seems to unload them when they get there.

—

"Is he your son?" Levi finally asks quietly, sipping on a caf that Erwin had refused.

"No," Erwin answers. Eren is asleep; today had been lessons in meditation, which seemed to tire him more than the physical ones. "His father is dead."

Levi doesn’t believe him.

He just isn’t sure which part.

He raps his knuckles against the table, drawing out the sabaac deck. “There is no death, there is the Force,” he parrots, dealing out the cards.

That earns him a ghost of a smile. “You’re very surprising,” Erwin murmurs. He picks up his hand.

"You’re surprising, too," Levi tells him when Erwin wins.

—

There is, of course, an end to this.

Eventually, Levi’s ship runs its charted path to a small, dusty planet on the outer rim. “Here?” he asks, eyes squinting against the force of the planet’s two suns.

"Here," Erwin nods, patting Eren’s shoulder as he passes by him in the ship’s cockpit. "No one will look out here."

"That’s because there’s nothing out here except dirt and Hutts," Levi raises his eyebrows. 

Eren’s face is creased in that same, pinched expression it had in the cantina across the galaxy. “He would stay if you asked him to, Master.”

Erwin smiles back at Eren, slightly sad. “That would require me to ask, Eren. That is not something I would do.”

"But you want him to," Eren argues—sometimes, in the deep of space, he had seemed so much older than seven. Levi sees every bit of his age now in his confusion over their denial and swallows around his suddenly dry throat.

"Jedi don’t want, kid," he mutters, gruffer than he means to.

"No," Erwin agrees, staring at him again, "they don’t."

—

Eren is fifteen the next time Levi sees him.

They watch Erwin’s sacrifice, Levi’s blaster feeling like a useless lump of metal in his hand.

Eren steadies him by his elbow.

"There is no death," he says sadly, "there is the Force."


End file.
